blog
I’m losing my knee in a few days. Oh it’s not an amputation. They call it a “replacement”…a “new knee”, a “titanium wonder”. I’ve tried the gels and shots and creams and sprays and Physical Therapy stints. I know I should be thankful to be living in an era when knee replacement is an option. And part of me IS grateful for that fact. But part of me is sad. Another loss, another transition, another reminder of time passing and body parts wearing out and things not how they used to be.
Once a widow client of mine said year four was the hardest. Just into year three I find I am struggling with an alone-ness that is visceral, the proverbial “lonely in a crowd” feeling that lives with me, now tugs at my heart, lurks in the recesses of my mind, conjures memories without warning. I’m dreaming often, of Bob, he on the periphery perhaps, or center stage but still obscure, a shadow person whom I long to grasp, to hold, to lean against, to breathe in. The dreams are not nightmares. But they are elusive, painful.
Spring comes hard to the Midwest. This morning a 29 mile an hour wind buffets oaks, slants rain horizontal, creeps into window crevices, plummets temperatures to high 30’s. It could snow tomorrow! I clutch hot coffee with both hands. Watch from my bed nature’s onslaught. Defying the golden hope of warmer days, benign winds. Defying a spring when all of Nature’s varied greens abound.
My old Jeep Cherokee sits forlorn, hunkered among the gleam and glitz of models who glare new-ness in the afternoon sun. My old Jeep served us well. Never mind leather worn seats, a nick or two on her body. Never mind I’ve put money into her since Bob died, me on yet another learning curve called “car maintenance”.
Robin Sharma is often quoted for the popular saying, “Change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous in the end.” Not many of us profess to liking change. We tend to fearfully avoid it, and stubbornly resist the inevitable waves that flow through our lives at various stages. Change demands a response from us we may or may not be prepared to give. Change, whether chosen or forced upon us can bring incredible opportunity for something greater to develop than we ourselves imagined. But why is it so uncomfortable, even when we know it is good?
I loved his hands. Neat, square and strong. Nails clipped, slightly callused. Capable hands. Hands that gripped an ax, chopped wood, built a fire with finesse. Hands that tinkered. Hands that produced a distinctive, legible cursive. Hands that raked an acre of land with 20 odd oaks every autumn for 44 years.
One of the most basic tasks of a therapist is to help people sort through a myriad of uncomfortable, difficult and often confusing feelings. This task varies in complexity and the process can be as unique as each individual that enters the room. However, in a culture that is drowning in information, where answers are accessible in seconds, we are infantile in our ability to deal with our own emotional landscape. As a culture, we aren’t very good at sitting with pain and suffering. We are used to quick answers and expect quick “fixes” when we are uncomfortable. Or we are used to fighting it. We fight and beat ourselves up, trying to force a return to happiness and bliss.
Transitions are challenging. As we let go of the holiday season and enter a new year, we may feel a pending sense of uncertainty, of being “off stride”. Often we negate or don’t recognize a nagging discontent for what it might portend. Questions may arise. We may feel a bit sad, sadder that we “should” feel under the circumstances.
And some challenges are more daunting than others. The first child off to college (or kindergarten!) or the coming empty nest are big transitions. I remember when we moved from one town to another, literally five miles apart. Our youngest child was in first grade and up until that time had come home for lunch every day. We were in a new home in the same state and yet these venues were miles apart in many ways. In addition I developed a painful case of pleurisy which was difficult to shake. I didn’t understand why my sadness was increasing and why I was falling into a situational depression.
Years later, in my capacity as a social worker I gave a workshop at a Wellness Day. The topic of the workshop was Grief and Loss. In preparation and to illustrate, I made a chart of the losses I had experienced (large and small) throughout each decade of my life up until that time. I gave the attendees paper and pens to document their own losses decade by decade. The “aha” moment for me came when I looked at what had led up to my depression in the two decades which preceded it. The most significant loss was the death of my father at age 48 when I was 21.But even as an early adolescent and then as a senior in high school my mother had nearly died of severe kidney disease. In addition I had moved from the Midwest to California and attended a boarding school during my high school years. My father’s early death was a profoundly sad experience for me and for my young mother and younger brothers. I could recognize that for what it was and still is one of the most significant losses of my life. But why was I depressed when I had a house with the room we had been needing, three healthy kids, a husband who loved me? I believe I was experiencing “secondary losses”. The loss of a familiar home room by room. The loss of a neighborhood with neighbors who were friends as well. The loss of the daily routines of fixing lunch for and enjoying the pleasure of being with my little boy. Secondary losses are sorrows that add up and sometimes they contribute to a vague sadness that we do not recognize and may need help to acknowledge. I value highly the privilege of walking through, sorting through and working through the transitions my clients are facing.
The city pool closes today. Summer swimming in our pool is ending. I lay prone on a lounge chair, my first and last day at the pool this year. It’s a Sunday afternoon and my eyes are closed to the partly cloudy sky, the pale sunshine. My book lays unopened. Pool sounds take me back to all the beach days and pool days of my life. I was a “water baby”, loved to swim.
